Poetry Blog 3
With 50 years of writing behind me, I’m still learning how to create poems. Recently I wrote a poem that’s a little different from many that I write, and once I had a draft completed and began chipping away at it, trying to improve it line by line and word by word, it occurred to me that discussing the process while it was still fresh in my memory might help someone move forward a little along the Poet’s Path.
Here’s the event that caused me to write the poem. For exercise I frequently hike along any one of several local municipal walking paths, and a few days ago I followed one path nearly to its end and rested on a bench for a while before starting back toward my vehicle. As I sat on the bench with a forest in full foliage at my back, I suddenly heard wind chimes tinkling through the trees. I turned to look, remembering that the “forest” was only a narrow strip of woods with a residential street on the far side of it. Still, the idea of wind chimes hanging randomly from a tree in a forest took hold in my imagination, and as I walked back to my pickup truck, I considered how I might turn the idea into a poem.
In the poem, the walking path became a bit wilder, turning into a deer path, something quite common in my area, made and used by white-tailed deer as they move through wooded spaces. Beginning to write, I fell into character, speaking through a narrator probably a little less knowledgeable of deer than I really am, a trait that I try to reveal in the first five lines. Wind chimes are wonderful objects, but they’re just objects; art is almost always ultimately about people, seldom simply about an object. The poem needed to be about a character and that character’s reaction to the anomaly of wind chimes hanging from a tree in a forest. So the speaker might be a bit naïve about deer, but he isn’t totally out of his element in the woods; he recognizes oaks, hickories and maples, and he knows to be quiet and a bit reverent in other creatures’ woodland home.
Okay. Here’s the poem, and we’ll discuss it more at the end.
WIND CHIMES IN THE WOODS
I took a deer path through the woods,
not looking for deer but just because
I wondered how they spend their time
when no one sees them, where they go
and what they find along the way.
The walking was easy, the ground not steep.
With May half gone, all the sights
were shades of brown, gray or green,
with scattered patches bright with sun
and broken bits of blue above,
where tall oaks and hickories spread.
Mild breezes bore the dank scent
of fallen leaves on past years' leaves,
the bottom layer turning to earth.
Now and then a bird called
from just out of sight or a squirrel rustled
across the ground as young leaves waved
at the passing air and I walked on,
quietly, reverent in the wild,
walked until I reached a spot
where another path and my path crossed.
That's where I heard the sound, and stopped.
From up ahead to the left and off
both paths it came, that perfect sound
of handiwork and nature blent,
I've sometimes thought, the song of wind chimes
calling as if from a porch's eave,
always sweet, but there--just wrong.
From the path across loud leaves I strode
some thirty steps, then through a band
of undergrowth to where they hung
from a young maple's lowest bough,
jangling alone at face level
with not a sign of people near
to give intent to their clink and ring
as they related the air's mood.
I stood and looked, trying to find
a thought to help the sight make sense.
Who hangs wind chimes that won't be heard?
Could someone hope that deer and squirrels
like those tones? Did campers pitch
a tent and bring the sound of home
to keep the sleeping deep? But no,
I saw no ring of stones, no charred
sign of fire. Those wind chimes hung
to mark a spot. On that I settled.
That became my truth. A marker
made of sound, it brought someone
off one path or the other here--
but why? Oh no, I thought, it brought
two souls, one from each path--lovers,
they must be, perhaps too young
to have a better place to meet,
more likely a couple sworn to others,
forced to meet between their lives
where one path crossed another.
Mere assumptions, my reason said.
My wilder part chose not to reply.
Quickly I found my path and hurried
back to my own, well-ordered life,
hoping to leave no trace, convinced
I'd trampled onto a sacredness
that had no place to be but deep
beneath the trees, where deer and squirrels
keep all secrets to themselves
and wind chimes thrill at the breeze's touch
a long, long way between two worlds.
The narrator reveals himself as being observant. In fact, establishing that fact is what the poem mostly does until the speaker come to the crossed paths and hears the wind chimes. At that point observation takes a back seat to analysis as he seeks to make sense of the wind chimes, but another character trait soon comes forward and exerts power over his analytic self. After excluding less likely explanations, he rather logically determines that the chimes are meant to mark a spot in the forest, and he arrives at a reasonable hypothesis that the marker is meant for people traveling both intersecting paths. That those people are lovers is a possibility, but only a possibility. His analytic part points that out, yet his “wilder” part dismisses the thought. Now we see what motivates him. He’s a romantic.
He jumps to the conclusion that many romantics would prefer and, “convinced” by that motivation, he acts upon it, once again showing his reverential side by quickly retreating from the “sacredness” of the supposed trysting site.
That’s really all the poem is about–the speaker’s personality and mindset. Poetry is not a good medium for discussing someone’s personality and mindset directly. That’s where the setting and the conflict come in. As the speaker interacts with the setting, we achieve an image, and we learn who the speaker is. The conflict is provided by the oddly placed wind chimes and the speaker’s need to understand them. When he resolves what to do about the chimes, our understanding of the speaker becomes complete, at least insofar as the poem is concerned. Thus, the poem might seem to be about wind chimes, but it’s really a character study, yet that character study came about not because I observed a character but because I heard the sound of wind chimes through a visually impenetrable wall of trees.
So far we’ve discussed only content, which is one part of poetry. Form is the other part. I wanted to write in a four-beat line. That means that each line contains four accented syllables. If we say the word “accent,” we pronounce it AC-cent. We pronounce the first syllable more emphatically than we pronounce the second syllable. To construct a four-beat line, we arrange the words so that we include exactly four emphatic syllables, or accented syllables.
If you’re not familiar with this concept, go into the poem and read a line. Can you recognize the accented syllables? If not, try reading the line aloud, speaking quite normally. If you still don’t hear the accented–or “stressed”– syllables, try recording yourself reading a few lines and then listen for them. I’ve found that for many people this doesn’t come quickly, but once you do get it, it’s an ability you’ll never lose.
Since writing the first draft, I’ve made probably 50 or more changes to the poem. In the top half, I added the line “quietly, reverent in the wild” in order to establish the speaker as a reverent sort of person who would understand and act on the “sacredness” that he refers to near the end and also to suggest that he honors the “wild,” which ties in with his “wild” part’s refusal to reply to his logic. Where the wind chimes are introduced, I later inserted “that perfect sound / of handiwork and nature blent, / I’ve sometimes thought” in order to give the speaker something of a relationship with wind chimes in general; without that, wind chimes in the woods might be no different to him than would be a discarded water bottle along the path. I shortened the speaker’s thoughts about deer at the poem’s beginning because I sensed that he was saying too much about them, especially considering that deer don’t actually appear in the poem.
I rearranged quite a few words to achieve better rhythm. I changed some words so as to repeat particular vowel sounds or consonant sounds (assonance and alliteration, poetry teachers call them). One example is in the line “Who hangs wind chimes where they won’t be heard?” Originally, I used “can’t” but changed it to “won’t” mostly to repeat the w sound from “wind.” I shortened anything that appeared at all wordy. I replaced weaker words with stronger (more noticeable) words. For instance, one line below the above-mentioned line, I substituted “hope” for “thought” simply because I believed that “hope” conveyed more. I added the “band of underbrush” as an afterthought because it occurred to me that the lovers–if there really are lovers–would choose a somewhat hidden spot and that the presence of underbrush would afford a bit more privacy, not to mention that the appearance of privacy would promote the speaker’s assumption that the lovers exist. I’m still fretting over the fact that I used “deep” in line 45 and again in line 67. Is 22 lines enough space between the two uses?
These are only some of the changes I’ve made so far. But there’s one other effort I made, and I gained from it. After beginning the poem, I actually took a walk in the woods. Over the years I’ve spent a great deal of time in forests, but I went this time specifically to observe closely and collect details that I could bring into the poem. “Scattered patches bright with sun / and broken bits of blue above, / where tall oaks and hickories spread” resulted directly from that walk.
No doubt I’ll make more changes. I’m presently of two minds about the fact that the speaker gives in to his wild side yet returns to his “well-ordered life.” Is that a contradiction within the poem or just one of the many contradictions that we all carry within ourselves? More importantly, can I afford to leave it? At this moment, I’m thinking it has to change.
That’s a little bit of what it’s like to write poems.
Take yourself for a walk. Find yourself a poem to write. Thanks, and be safe.